The 2025 Barkley Marathons is over, with no finishers and just one Fun Run completion by the U.S.’s John Kelly.
Going back a year, the 2024 Barkley Marathons saw a record number of finishers — five in total, including Jasmin Paris (U.K.), the event’s first-ever female finisher. This unprecedented result left many speculating that the 2025 Barkley Marathons course would be the hardest yet — and that expectation appears to have been met.
The Barkley Marathons is an unmarked ultramarathon at Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee, consisting of five 20-plus-mile loops — past competitors report covering up to 26 miles on a single loop. Navigation by GPS is not allowed, and runners must use a map and compass to navigate to locations on the route and collect pages from hidden books in lieu of a more traditional dibber system. The route and book locations vary from year to year, and over time, race organizers purportedly make the race more difficult to finish.
John Kelly cooling off on loop three of the 2025 Barkley Marathons. All photos: Jacob Zocherman
In order to be awarded an official finish, runners must complete the five loops in less than 60 hours. Runners who don’t make the interim cutoffs to continue on for a full finish still have the opportunity to complete a Fun Run, if they can finish three loops inside of 40 hours. This year, this seemed about as much as anyone could aspire to.
The event has no set start time, only a 12-hour start window. During that window, the race organization blows a conch shell to signal the event will start in an hour. For 2025, the race began on Tuesday, March 18, at 11:37 a.m. U.S. EDT, under relatively cool weather and partly cloudy skies, as race director Gary Cantrell, aka Lazarus Lake, lit his ceremonial cigarette. This was the latest start time on record for the event.
The Barkley Marathons entrants list is kept secret, and the names of participants aren’t generally mentioned in the organization’s coverage until the event’s advanced stages. This makes understanding the race dynamics, let alone the basic race roster, largely speculative. In this article, we share what we’ve been able to gather took place. Do leave a comment to provide further verified information or let us know what your experience “out there” was like.
2025 Barkley Marathons Women’s Race
This year’s roster seems to have included a small number of women, but among them some with the potential to become the second Barkley Marathons women’s finisher. We believe these women included Kelly Halpin, Christiana Rugloski, Claire Bannwarth (France), Dena Carr, and Isobel Ross (Australia). The race, however, had other ideas, and we understand that this year no woman made it as far as loop two.
Kelly Halpin at the 2025 Barkley Marathons. She made it the furthest of this year’s women’s field.
For Ross, this was her third effort at the Barkley Marathons. In 2019, she finished the first loop in 16 hours, 50 minutes, almost five hours over the cutoff to continue, but was not put off, and returned in 2022 for another throw of the dice. Her luck did not improve, as the two-time Australian trail champion failed to complete a single loop. This year, yet again, she was awarded a DNF on loop one.
Bannwarth also would have looked like a promising hopeful. She specializes in the longest, most grueling of races, and has twice won the U.K.’s 268-mile Winter Spine Race. She also set a self-supported fastest known time on the 500-mile Colorado Trail, just a couple of weeks after her fifth-place finish at the 2023 Hardrock 100. This was her Barkley debut, and like Ross, she failed to finish the first loop.
A smiling Claire Bannwarth listens as “Taps” is played for her DNF of the 2025 Barkley Marathons.
We understand Halpin was the top woman finisher and came the closest to finishing a loop. She came to the race with some Barkley experience, having tapped out on loop two in the 2024 edition. She told iRunFar, “They made the course significantly harder this year and I missed the cutoff by two minutes for finishing loop one. But it was really fun. Hands down, the hardest course I think in history, and they also gave us the latest start time in history. As a comparison, I finished my first lap last year in 10.5 hours. This year, I finished in 13 hours, 22 minutes. And that was with all my knowledge from last year’s course and almost perfectly navigating the course and finding the books this time. It was nuts.”
And so for another year, the course has won, and there were no women finishers of the 2025 Barkley Marathons.
2025 Barkley Marathons Men’s Race
The attrition rate at this year’s Barkley Marathons was higher than ever, with what we believe only 10 of roughly 35 men making it through the first lap within the allotted time. Early reports from the race’s lone media feed, Keith Dunn who posted sporadic updates on BlueSky and X, indicated that the race was already behind schedule on previous years: “The first runner has come through the Fire Tower in [circa] 7:00 hours, over an hour slower than last year.”
While details remain vague, we understand the first back after loop one was three-time Barkley finisher John Kelly. Next back after that was French orienteer and trail runner Maxime Gauduin. After that and in an uncomfirmed order were France’s Sébastien Raichon and Japan’s Tomokazu Ihara — on his sixth attempt at the Barkley Marathons.
We believe the U.S.’s Ian Farris, who has completed a loop a couple times before, was in the mix among the early runners back from a successful loop one. We also understand runner and high altitude mountaineer Chris Fisher was among the men’s field, but don’t yet know the outcome of his race.
Among the early drops was multisport icon Max King, who we understand sustained a knee injury.
Tomokazu Ihara on loop three of the 2025 Barkley Marathons.
As loop two commenced with nine runners remaining in the race — one of those loop-one finishers opted to retire — it already appeared doubtful that we would see a finisher this year. The remaining hope was dissipated when the 24-hour mark arrived and no runner had returned from the second lap. For comparison, more than 10 folks finished two laps in under 24 hours both in 2023 and 2024.
There were reports of bewildered runners returning having failed to navigate the loop, with one of Dunn’s posts reading: “Two runners have come back after wandering around Stallion Mountain and a few other places before coming back. ‘I got the full Barkley experience of being navigationally embarrassed.’ ‘We saw quite a bit!’”
Ihara was back first, finishing the second lap with 24:32 on the clock, followed by Kelly in 25 hours even, and Gauduin and Raichon together in 25:29. The four finishers of loop two continued on into the third lap, with Ihara leading the charge.
Sébastien Raichon was visibly suffering after two loops.
Gauduin, who appeared to be in a lot of pain after the second loop, was the first to drop. We understand he withdrew without collecting any book pages, and three remained on loop three.
When Ihara and Kelly passed by the Fire Tower on loop three, their gap remained at about 30 minutes, and it seemed plausible they both could achieve a Fun Run finish. The race’s 36-hour interim cutoff for starting loop four came and went in the nighttime hours between Wednesday and Thursday, without any runners finishing loop three. From there, it was a final four-hour wait to see if any runners would reach the finish of loop three by the 40-hour cutoff for a Fun Run finish.
With 10 minutes to go, John Kelly arrived back to the infamous yellow gate that marks the start and finish of each loop, stopping the clock at 39:50:27, earning a Fun Run finish, and rounding out his ninth appearance at the Barkley Marathons.
Then, just two minutes before the cutoff, Sébastien Raichon returned to the finish, however, he didn’t complete the full loop and was tapped out.
As the 40-hour cutoff came and went, Tomokazu Ihara was still on course, also missing the opportunity for a Fun Run finish in his sixth attempt at Barkley.
Over BlueSky and X, the Barkley Marathons’ lone media entity Keith Dunn made his traditional declaration: “The 2025 Barkley Marathons is over. There are no finishers.”
[Editor’s Note: We’ll keep updating this article as more info comes in on how the race played out. Please comment to share details if you like. The article was last updated at 12:30 p.m. US MDT. Thanks so much to Taka who maintains this public spreadsheet of info which collates Keith Dunn’s info, as well as Maggie Guterl and Kelly Halpin for their input on this year’s event.]
